Unbored

Since the first two retro reviews have been focused on the boys’ side of things, for this one I’ve decided to give girls cartoons a chance too, and look at another iconic toy and cartoon that’s survived in one form or another to the present day – yes, it’s the pastel-coloured plastic ponies everyone knows and loves, My Little Pony.

Like the other cartoons featured previously, My Little Pony existed to promote a toyline of plastic or felt-covered cartoony ponies with soft brushable manes and tails that could be styled, as well as a range of accessories, both pony-themed (like stables) and person-themed (like ice-cream shops).
Obviously, I myself didn’t own any ponies (SHUT UP), as I wasn’t that kind of guy (NO REALLY, SHUT UP!), but my sister had a couple of them. I didn’t think much of them, but then I wasn’t the target audience. They didn’t have many points of movement or anything, and they all looked pretty similar. However, my sister and her friends liked them, and apparently so did a lot of other girls, since there’s a huge collectors club for them, and if you google

‘My Little Pony’ you’ll come up with a wide variety of custom themed ones people have made – including the Master Chief my Little Pony and this collection of excellently realised movie ponies. So, there’s still a lot of interest in them, even now – and some apparently change hands for hundreds of dollars or pounds on Ebay and other auction sites.

But what about the cartoon? My memories of it are extremely vague, as I don’t even remember it being on UK TV when I was younger, aside from the occasional special episode during school holidays. So what happened in it? what was it all about?

Well, apparently the ponies lived in Ponyland, which was a magical place. And it must’ve been, because they don’t have any opposable thumbs, but yet have houses, ice-cream, fences, furniture and all manner of normal conveniences.
I for one, am concerned about this. I think it needs an explanation! Are the ponies all massively powerful telekinetics? Are their human friends (a trio of children) their slaves

off-camera? Did the ponies inherit their civilisation from a long-extinct race of benevolent aliens? Sadly, we shall never know.

Anyhow, there’s also three species of ponies too. The normal ones who are regular ponies, and have no remarkable attributes (well, other than talking, and being brightly coloured, anyway), the flying ones, who are like the Pegasus, with little wings, and the horned unicorn-esque ones. All three groups get along in a utopian and racially-equal society, which is a model to us all, along with a variety of similarly fluffy and cute creatures, but there are also a menagerie of trolls, goblins, and evil witches and wizards who want to capture or enslave the ponies for various ill-defined reasons, and the ponies have to keep out of their clutches, and occasionally teach them a lesson of sorts. I imagine it has very little to do with stampedes or caving in a skull or two with their hooves, though.

The cartoon began with several prime-time specials, and a theatrical movie

(gladly, not live-action), before progressing to a full series of two seasons, with a revival in the early nineties, and apparently another oneis airing currently. Wow, those ponies know how to keep going.
Since most of the stories are multi-part adventures, in this review I’m going to concentrate only on the season two episode ‘The Ice-Cream Wars’ in an effort to lower my dentist bills from tooth decay, and preseve my genitalia from wasting away due to lack of testosterone.

So, let’s fire up the Unbored Retro-Reviewatron to channel a hole back in time and space and have a looksee…

So the episode opens with a variety of technicolour ponies babysitting four of the baby ponies. I note now that they are all in a nursery, and not a barn, and that the little babies are tucked up in a wicker cot, and the other two are in a baby chair.
One pony (I dunno her name yet) has a technicolour rainbow mane, which is pretty cool. However, her voice is also pretty dumb.
The babies are behaving badly, throwing their food and toys at the ponies, so the pink pegasus one breaks out into a song, which seems to cheer them up.

ARGH WHY AM I WATCHING THIS

The babies then almost commit suicide by riding skateboards (why do ponies need skateboards?!) into a wall. THEY ALL CONTINUE TO SING

So, they decide to go out for a walk to calm them all down, and head to the ice-cream store – and oho, it turns out that the little-little ones are the ‘newborn’ ponies and the baby-babies, and the ones looking after them are also babies, as ‘scoops’ the owner of the ice-cream store is bigger and has a more grown-up voice. Aha, the plot thickens. And so does the custard…

Anyhow, Scoops reveals that there’s no Ice Cream! Catatrophe!! Has there been an embargo on ice cream shipments to Ponyland due to the child labour and bad parenting? Is it due to a lack of workers with thumbs?
… No, apparently the ice-cream works of Rocky Ripple (Ice Cream works… what?!) have been shut down to drive  Fudgey McSwain (teehee) out of business.
The two fierce business rivals apparently used to be friends, with one supplying the ice cream, and one the toppings, between them supplying Ponyland with a golden era of Ice-Cream.

It was a time when all across ponyland everyone would know the names of Rocky Ripple and Fudgey McSwain, and not a pony in the land would go without the glorious melding of topping and ice-cream. People came from far and wide to sample their delicious work, and their business partnership served as a model for all – until their disasterous breakup, which I’m sure we’ll learn about in a minute, once I stop making shit up.

The baby ponies decide to do something about it, so I suppose this episodes’ going to be about them – which is irritating, because their voices are really annoying.
So, they go to visit Rocky Ripple, who is either a troll or goblin of some kind, or just incredibly ugly, and he rants about developing his ultimate ice cream before he was put out of business – Double Banana Marshmallow Colada – which to be fair, does sound pretty frickin’ awesome.
It turns out that his recipe has been stolen, and he thinks Fudgey McSwain (snigger) took it.
Fudgey (chortle) is a bit of a dumbass, but agrees reluctantly to talk to Rocky Ripple, and apparently hasn’t stolen the recipe. They make up, and decide to look for the recipe together.

Oho, but it’s a LIE, Fudgey McSwain is actually out to frame Rocky Ripple! ONOES!
He gets hit in the face with ice-cream, and then accuses Rocky of being out to humiliate him, and then runs off to his factory for… some reason. I’m not entirely clear on this. Anyhow, the baby ponies follow him, still carting the newborns around with them – and all the adults are apparently okay with this.

Perhaps the ponies are like some kind of master race, and defying them results in death by ice-cream overfeeding. Or maybe they’re like sacred cows, and if you hurt one, you get beaten to death. Or maybe they turn carniverous on a whim.  Or somehow support the cosmic balance of Ponyland.

Anyhow, they park the babies in their carriages on a conveyor belt for some reason, and then act alarmed when it starts up. But the worst that happens if they get fed some toppings, and put in handy infant pony-sized ice-cream containers, so it’s all good.
McSwain and Ripple then start an all-out ice-cream based artillery duel using giant tanks that fire globs of ice-cream and toppings at each other… and still nobody intervenes. Also, there’s noticably an animation error in this scene, as two of the baby ponies talking to each other are the same pony, which is a bit glaring.

The ice-cream tanks go to war, and the ponies retreat in fear of becoming casualties of war in the quite literally messy battle. They go back to the sweet shop, and Scoops feeds the newborns the last of the Ice Cream to shut up their incessant wailing.
And lo and behold! All is saved, as they discover the recipe, carelssly dropped into a tub of ice cream! THE DAY IS SAVED!

The baby ponies race back to the war zone to deliver the message, but the war is in full swing, with thousands of casualties on both sides, and mass depopulation, the destruction of industry, and organised society and the beginning of an ice-cream holocaust for Ponyland. Refugees are fleeing the area, and the UN are poised to intervene as the death toll mounts.

Luckily, that’s not true, and the flying baby pony (Northstar pony, apparently) flies into the fight, risking her own neck bravely to stop the ongoing battle. The two enemies become friends again, and then say the

ponies can have all the ice-cream they want!
However, understandably by this point, the baby ponies have realised that both the ice-cream makers are fucking nuts, and could go over the edge at any minute. So instead, they calmly say ‘we’ve had enough ice-cream for one day’ and, as was the tradition back in those days, they all laugh their way into the sunset.

So, that’s an episode. It was only about nine minutes long, and it was pretty much what I expected – simple, sweet, kind of silly and straightforward.
I’m guessing My Little Pony was aimed at young girls rather than older ones, and I’m also guessing most of them would’ve been content with this. But it’s still kind of sloppy with things like animation, logic, and storytelling – but again, the audience wouldn’t really notice or care by that point, and as long as it sold toys, I’m guessing the production company and the people holding the cash – i.e. the toy company – didn’t really care.

It is still fun to wonder about the bizarre logic of ponyland, where everyone only ever eats ice-cream or cake, and all the ponies live in houses and have shops, yet no one seems to have money, have hands to build anything, and there aren’t any boy ponies either… so where do the babies come from? Spontaneous budding? Are they some kind of freakish race that shifts gender when in heat? Am I thinking about this too much?

All in all, I know I’m not the audience for this kind of thing, being far too old and entirely the wrong gender,  but it was fun to watch it, and you know – you read these things to see what jokes people make.

The ponies are actually kinda cute (like fluffy kittens cute, not the other kind! it hasn’t warped me that much!) and sweet, despite their silly names and antics, and the whole thing is pretty harmless. and that’s probably why the franchise has kept going for so long.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to see what would actually happen if you feed ice cream to a horse.